Back

IN PASSING

Peter Downsbrough

IN PASSING

1982 (written in 1981)

7 5/8 x 5 3/8 inches (19.5 x 13.7 cm)

104 pages / Unpaginated / Perfect bound / Softcover

102 plates (collages, drawings, photographs, words)

Offset (black and white)

Publisher: Éditions Eric Fabre, Paris, following the exhibition, November 6 – December 5, 1981

Printer: Snoek-Ducaju & Zoon, Ghent

Typeset: Intergraphic, Ghent

Print run: not noted (1,000)

ISBN: none

CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ NUMBER: 22

In the late 1970s, Peter Downsbrough was looking to expand the vocabulary of the work, which involved, among other things, the introduction of dice. In this book, the artist responsible for the “mise-en-jeu, photographs, and mise en page,” introduces a new graphic approach that is radically different from his minimal style. The content is cearly inspired by Stéphane Mallarmés’s “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard” from 1914. The book is a record of a dialogue between two people. Each “voice” was assigned two pairs of dice engraved with words on three or four faces per die: “take–or–cut, on–and–move, now–set–and–fix, again–again–or–hold.” The dialogue was determined by the words that came up after each throw of the dice, and photographs were taken (May 1981). Throughout the book, the dialogue formed by the words quoted above alternates with photographs of the dice themselves or of the hands throwing them, and with drawings of blank dice. The layout of this book is reminiscent of an abstract photographic novel. At the end of the book, each die is represented schematically. A photograph of a publicity pane–“Choisir c’est vivre”–is placed on the last right-hand page, followed, on the last page, by a smaller photograph of a blank pair of dice. The title, in large Helvetica outline, has a prominent place on the cover–a gradation from red to pink toward the spine. For the back cover, Downsbrough again chose a photographic bleed of a woman’s hand.

Read Less Read More

Peter Downsbrough developed a strongly reduced visual vocabulary, which he used to investigate the given space in a very personal and precise way. His materials consists of letters and lines. He used adhesive letters, forming conjunctions, prepositions, verbs and/or nouns and applies them to the walls, floors and/or ceilings. Lines, for which he used cloth tape, emphasize certain architectural elements. Metal pipes, in the space and sometimes on the wall, accentuate the space. Areas defined by lines or painted black sometimes play a role, and, with the lines and the words reveal the architecture of interior or exterior spaces.

This rigorous treatment of the space continues in Peter Downsbrough’s books, maquettes, photographs, videos or prints. They all reveal an extreme coherence, which some situate in the minimal and conceptual art movements. In the course of time, the spatial interventions with the parallel vertical pipes or dowels have been complemented with words, lines and planes. Conjunctions such as AS, IF, BUT, FROM, MAAR, OP, EN, ET, OU, MAIS… have a double function: they work as iconographic signs which underline and reveal the space, and they offer the viewer the possibility to go, in his/her mind, from one thought to the other. For a conjunction is a word that can’t be declined or conjugated; it establishes a connection between sentences or parts of sentences.

Peter Downsbrough: With the word, one takes part in a dialogue, a discourse on its precise meaning. The word for me is an object. It has both a precise and a vague meaning. It is a universe one is confronted with. But there is no obligatory way of reading.

Related Information

View Artist Page